Photographing the Landscape workshop

Thank you to architecture practice Studio Naama for inviting me to do a workshop on photographing the landscape with their students at Oxford Brookes University. The students are exploring the tensions in building on the so-called “brownfield” site of Swanscombe Peninsula - a post-industrial landscape on the banks of the Thames that was mostly abandoned to nature in the 1990s, now home to a boating community and a thriving mosaic habitat for threatened species of flora & fauna.

The task was to look closely at all the elements that make up a landscape that might at first-glance look empty of life. The students were given several prompts to guide their looking, focusing on textures, details, traces of human activity and nature flourishing.

The students used the prompts to create a collective portrait of the place taking one Polaroid each along the journey.

Polaroids by Oxford Brookes architecture students exploring post-industrial wetlands